In Gaps at School, Weighing Family Life

I heard that this NYT reporter, Michael Winerip, is among the worst education reporters out there and, based on this article, I believe it.  He cluelessly repeats the tired "woe-is-us, demography-is-destiny" argument put forward by apologists for lousy schools:

THE federal No  Child Left Behind  law of 2002 rates schools based on how students perform  on state standardized tests, and if too many children score poorly, the school  is judged as failing.
 
But how much is really the school’s fault?
 
A new study by the Educational  Testing Service  — which develops and administers more than 50 million standardized tests annually, including the SAT — concludes that an awful lot of those low scores can be explained by factors that have nothing to do with schools. The study, “The Family: America’s Smallest School,” suggests that a lot of the failure has to do with what takes place in the home, the level of  poverty and government’s inadequate support for programs that could make a difference, like high-quality day care and paid maternity leave.
 
The E.T.S. researchers took four variables that are beyond the control of schools: The percentage of children living with one parent; the percentage of  eighth graders absent from school at least three times a month; the percentage of children 5 or younger whose parents read to them daily, and the percentage of eighth graders who watch five or more hours of TV a day. Using just those four variables, the researchers were able to predict each state’s results on the federal eighth-grade reading test with impressive accuracy.
 
“Together, these four factors account for about two-thirds of the large  differences among states,” the report said. In other words, the states that had the lowest test scores tended to be those that had the highest percentages of children from single-parent families, eighth graders watching lots of TV and eighth graders absent a lot, and the lowest percentages of young children being read to regularly, regardless of what was going on in their schools.
 
Which gets to the heart of the report: by the time these children start school at age 5, they are far behind, and tend to stay behind all through high  school. There is no evidence that the gap is being closed.

No kidding, poor kids from single parent households enter school behind and are more of a challenge to educate.  But superficial studies like this make it seem like it's impossible to educate them and that schools therefore shouldn't be held accountable when, for example, the majority of 4th graders can't read "See Spot Run".  What rubbish!
 
I've rebutted this borderline-racist nonsense before, when it was espoused by James Heckman in a WSJ Op Ed in 1/06 (http://edreform.blogspot.com/2006/01/catch-em-young.html).  Here's an excerpt from what I wrote:

Here's what's really going on:  
 

A) There are way too many incompetent and/or unmotivated teachers (it's amazing how such an obvious, factual statement is construed as an attack on teachers; I LOVE  skilled, motivated teachers; it's the incompetent and/or unmotivated ones I have a problem with because of the lifelong damage that they do to the  children in their care);

B)  Because of the way teachers are recruited and assigned (or choose their  assignments), a hugely disproportionate number of the worst teachers end up in schools serving the neediest (read: low-income, minority) students. (See  pages 9-19 of my slides at  http://www.tilsonfunds.com/Personal/Teacherquality.pdf>  to see the harsh reality.)

C) Therefore -- surprise! -- these  students don't achieve, but that's NOT because they're poor or minority:  it's because they're stuck in horrible schools with a shockingly high percentage of lousy teachers!!!!! (To see the difference good teachers make vs. bad ones, see pages 3-8 of this presentation: http://www.tilsonfunds.com/Personal/Teacherquality.pdf  )

Checker Finn also had a great piece on this entitled Fie on Fatalism (http://edreform.blogspot.com/2007/02/fie-on-fatalism.html):

School  reforms come and go. But educational determinism, it appears, goes on forever.  By which I mean the view that schools are essentially powerless to accomplish  much by way of learning gains, no matter what is done to or about them. That  is because -- take your pick -- they don't have enough money/time/experienced  teachers; or students face so many problems in their lives that it's folly to  expect schools to do more with them; or kids lack the innate ability to  acquire more skills or deeper knowledge, regardless of how their schools may change.

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In Gaps at School, Weighing Family Life

By MICHAEL WINERIP
Published: December 9, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/09/nyregion/nyregionspecial2/09Rparenting.html

THE federal No Child Left Behind law of 2002 rates schools based on how students perform on state standardized tests, and if too many children score poorly, the school is judged as failing.
But how much is really the school’s fault?